‘When Sophie first saw me, I was onstage. This girl Irina who I lived with at the time had organised a storytelling series at a bar in Bushwick, and after a couple of weeks of watching I decided I wanted to tell a story too. I wasn’t like the other kids in the house; I’d never assumed I’d be an actor or a writer or anything creative. When I was growing up, everybody figured I’d stay in Burnsville, West Virginia, and have some kids. But there I was in New York and for ten minutes I could make people listen to me and treat me like I was important.’

Sophie Stark was a film director whose movies were described as ‘more like life than life itself’. But her genius came at a cost. Told from the different perspectives of the six people who loved her most, this is the story of a brilliant, infuriating woman who was never quite understood, even by those closest to her.

My copy of this book had one of those irritating stickers on the front that you can’t remove, proclaiming Sophie Stark to be this year’s blockbuster, with comparisons to The Girl on the Train. Now that’s a big claim; I loved The Girl on the Train so this one had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

Comparisons to The Girl on the Train are, in some ways, misguided. Sophie Stark is not a thriller. The plot doesn’t build up to a big, bloody confrontation. It is an altogether quieter book, and all the more powerful for that.

Six different narrators whose lives were irrevocably changed by knowing Sophie Stark, including her brother, her husband and her first crush, reveal to the reader how they came to know Sophie – and whether they actually really knew her at all. Unfortunately these narrators do all sound very similar in tone and voice, but North writes with such aching believability that this shouldn’t bother you too much.

The question at the core of this novel is this: Who is Sophie Stark? She is, in some ways, an unlikeable character. She is ruthless in her pursuit of artistic integrity and she doesn’t always realise when she is hurting those around her. But she is also damaged, needy and more than a little bit lost. She is difficult to understand and the fragments provided by the narrators do little to illuminate who she really is.

You won’t finish this book with a clear answer to the central question. This might enrage some readers, but it means that you will keep thinking about the story long after you turn the final page. This would be a great book for a book club, as you’re bound to want to discuss it at length afterwards.

Using six different narrators to tell Sophie’s story works brilliantly. If we had been told the story from her own perspective, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as powerful. The narrators don’t understand her; they can’t because she simply doesn’t understand herself. You witness their addiction to her and this makes it all the more painful as the story heads towards its inexorable end.

It is a story of the making of art, the pressure of genius, and a young woman searching for a way to communicate the things inside her head. It is not particularly uplifting but it is undoubtedly thought-provoking, wonderfully written and utterly compelling.

Highly, highly recommended. I can’t wait to read it again.

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.